Torrent activity up despite Pirate Bay block

Despite the closure of The Pirate Bay, Dutch ISP XS4All has claimed that BitTorrent traffic has increased.

Anti-Piracy group BREIN this week stated that 90 per cent of Dutch Internet users can no longer access the BitTorrent site directly. However, the group neglected to mention that many users now employ proxy sites to access the site.

According to XS4All, there is no sign that their subscribers are changing their downloading habits. In fact evidence suggests the contrary.

“Since the Pirate Back blocking lawsuit began, BitTorrent traffic has not been reduced, it increased instead,” XS4All’s Niels Huijbregts states.

The ISP looked at the traffic on its network and found that over the past 12 months traffic increased on ports that are commonly used for BitTorrent. XS4all claims that all the news about the blockade may be one of the reasons for this increase.

“I think that the increase is a result of all the media attention for the lawsuit and the blockade. Perhaps people who until then had never downloaded thought ‘I hear so much about downloading music and movies, let me try it!’”, added Huijbregts. “What I want to say to BREIN is this: Your repressive policy does not work. You can block access to the Pirate Bay, but that clearly doesn’t result in the desired effect on the download behaviour of the Dutch.”

The ISP claims that the solution to piracy is not censorship, but innovation, and XS4All suggests that the entertainment industry should build their own version of The Pirate Bay.